about citizenJoe

What it's all about

CitizenJoe is a multi-partisan nonprofit - with liberals, conservatives & in-betweeners - that aims to engage all Americans in open, fact-based dialogue on national policy debates.

We do that two ways:

By offering this site, a source of straight, fact-based, non-wonked and balanced info on national policy debates, and

By promoting open, friendly and - we dare say - fun dialogue both online and off

Our goal at citizenJoe is to take the spotlight off politics and politicians and put it back on policy and the people. We seek the same political diversity as the nation itself, which is why we don't give a point of view – we leave that to our readers.

We also don't tell you what to do with the information you read on citizenJoe: keep it to yourself, talk about it with friends, use it to vote or, hey, even start your own political campaign! Why not? After all, it's your democracy too.

Non-partisan — Who Are You Kidding?

We know everyone has an opinion, but we try to get past ours so we don't color our readers' views. To make sure we don't veer from non-partisanship, citizenJoe keeps a balance of political views on our board and on our staff so we can be our own checks and balances.

How Joe works

citizenJoe is almost entirely a volunteer run organization. Joe's website, articles and events are created by Americans of all types - educators, lawyers, nonprofit types, filmmakers, finance people, you name it - who all sign on to the citizenJoe credo of open, fact-based dialogue and donate their time.

Our writers and editors also represent a balance of political views. The fact and policy pages on the site are created as a collaborative effort with writers/editors constantly upkeeping and building the site to make sure it's current and balanced. To see exactly who our writers are and what their individual political leanings are, see our Who We Are page.

After five years of bringing our readers non-partisan straight information on national policy debates, citizenJoe is calling it a day.

What you see here is an archive of many of the fact pages, issue primers and reader discussions from 2004 through 2009.

Although our volunteers are no longer able to keep citizenJoe fresh, we still believe in its mission - to provide Americans with a source of unspun information on contentious policy issues and to promote multi-partisan dialogue.

If that mission inspires you and you think you might want to pick up the citizenJoe torch, please let us know.